How We Decide

Over the past few months, I have learned something about myself: I am chronically indecisive. I have trouble making even the most unimportant things. You all should see me try to order a sandwich at Subway. I treat a decision that small as if it'll impact the rest of my life.

My friend Tess Hopkins and I found ourselves at Half Priced Books one fine, summer afternoon. We both talk of being indecisive, and so we ventured over to the self help section to pick out our book for this AP Comp assignment. We both picked out a couple of books about getting over indecisiveness, and I kid you not, we had a hard time deciding on which book about indecisiveness we wanted. Tess and I had a darn good laugh about that one. 

Finally, I just randomly chose one. "How We Decide" by Jonah Leher proved to be not only an interesting read, but a very beneficial one for my chronic indecisiveness. Leher has studied neurology from Columbia University in addition to psychology. "How We Decide" was researched thoroughly, and every fact about decision making provided is paired with a study done at top universities and a story about an everyday person facing the issue present. For example, one section was about leaving your brain on autopilot because it normally knows what it's doing. The story that was paired with information was one about an opera singer named Renee Fleming. She has sung a famous and complicated piece of opera hundreds of times, and can normally perform it flawlessly without blinking an eye. Suddenly, Fleming began to think about the mechanics of singing instead of just letting her brain take care of it on autopilot. She began making mistakes while performing, and the thought process became even more involved. After years of singing, Fleming even considered retiring because she felt like she couldn't get her groove back.

The mind is a very complex thing, and as it turns out, decision making is one of the more complex things involved with the mind. As a chronic indecisive, I was happy to learn that I'm not the only one who has a hard time making decisions... even the easy ones. "How We Decide" started off with how to make decisions when you can't make the easy ones. The key is to go with your gut. Every single time, just go with your gut. Pretty soon, your brain will learn which decisions were good, and which were bad. The brain will begin to change its neurological connections in order to better improve one's decision making.

"How We Decide" is a book that I really enjoyed reading. I found, too, that psychology is a very interesting thing. We humans are complex creatures, and we will probably never know everything about our minds. I really enjoyed reading this, and because of this, I'm on the road to recovery from my serious condition of chronic indecisiveness. I'm totally kidding; it's not really that serious, but it is rather annoying. I'd recommend "How We Decide" to anybody. 

The Feminist View

The three articles "The Vindication of the Rights of Women", "The Great Lawsuit", and "If Men Could Menstruate" all had one very obvious thing in common: feminism.

Each article discussed the various ways in which women are either treated differently than men, or even just viewed differently.

The first article, "The Vindication of the Rights of Women", was pretty difficult for me to comprehend. The dialogue of the late 1700's is just a wee bit different than that of today. There was plenty of vocab for me to add to my note cards (yay?), but that made this one pretty tricky. The gist of what I got out of it was that girls should be able to go to school with boys because that would help them think for themselves. During the late 1700's, women were not considered very highly on the social spectrum. Because of this, they took care of the house, and they didn't have much of a reason to think for themselves. I did like this article, as I've never read anything like it. The fact that girls and boys would go to school together seemed so outlandish; I remember having to sit "boy-girl-boy-girl" in first grade as a sort of punishment. Going to school with boys is all we've known for years.

The next, "The Great Lawsuit", was also a blast from the past, as it was first published in 1843. This one was pretty difficult to read too, but again, I think that's because of the 19th century lingo. "The Great Lawsuit" talked of the hidden power of women. One part even talks about how women greatly influence men, but they aren't really willing to admit nor acknowledge it. Women were still looked at as slaves, but they had more power than most men cared to admit.

The last, and my personal favorite, "If Men Could Menstruate" made me LLOL (literally laugh out loud) multiple times. It's funny how men would easily put a spin on something of this nature. I especially liked the part about how men would say "he's a three-pad man" as if that's a really impressive thing to be. Girls are not that way at all. I'll admit that the subject does come up when chatting with good girl friends, but it's never a braggadocios affair. Men would easily make it that way. They would make menstruation holy, too, saying that Jesus bled for our sins. Women are considered impure, because unlike Jesus, they don't bleed. This article seemed so accurate, and it was hilariously written. I can picture guys complaining profusely about cramps and telling women that they just don't understand.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

While reading this article, I found it frightening just how many times I could relate to the things it discussed.

For me, the most scary and relevant thing that I related to is the fact that I used to be an avid "deep" reader. I would read every night before bed and not just read, I'd ponder the book some after I was done with it, too. It was a good habit, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. Lately, however, I have noticed that I read for fun much less than I used to. I have "successfully" read a half of two different books, so I guess that means I have read a full book this summer. I get so bored with reading after just a few pages, which is one of the key concepts from the article. I have become an avid skimmer instead of an avid reader, and it's sad that I don't enjoy reading as much as I used to. This article hit it right on the head.

This article also discussed how the human mind is being shaped by the easy of internet. I found the part about Nietzche particularly interesting. His writing style changed drastically after introducing a type writer verses just writing his thoughts. The funny thing, to me anyway, is that there isn't as much of a difference from writing to a type writer as there is from writing to a computer. A computer does plenty of services for us, like making research much easier. A typewriter can't do that, all it does is help you type the thoughts you could have just written out. It may make it go a little more quickly, but it's hard to believe that small change could result in a huge difference in writing styles. If that change was that big from writing to type writer, it makes one wonder how big of a change will come from writing/using a type writer to using a computer.

The last scary point from this article is the attitude of the founders of Google. Page, one of the founders, said the following:

"Certainly if you had all the world's information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you'd be better off"

I personally disagree. Having access to every bit of information does not make anyone smarter.

Google, I love you, man, but you're really harshing my mellow.